The name is Tupolev Tu-144. In Russian, you’d call it Туполев Ту-144. The NATO reporting name for the Tu-144 is “Charger”. You might have other labels thrown at it: Concordski or the communist Concorde. For NASA, it was “a supersonic flying laboratory”. Given that the Tupolev Tu-144 was the first supersonic airliner to take to the skies, might it not be better calling the “Concorde” a “European Tupolev Tu-144”?
The Russians have a word called “miryachit”, which describes a disease in which the sufferer mimics everything that is said or done by another. While the west might collectively accuse Russia of being a figurative victim of such kind, especially in the making of Tupolev Tu-144, Russia was the first nation to send a person to space and the first nation with a spacewalker.
Russia has managed to build aviation marvels: the Antonov An-225, which was destroyed in the Ukraine-Russia War; the Caspian Sea Monster, a watercraft cum aircraft; the Kalilin K-7, a metal monster, among others. These three aircraft, in addition to being some of the largest planes to have designed, carry what a student of aeronautics once described as possessing “a Russian ruggedness”, a kind that might not have a parallel elsewhere. Russia’s distinction also includes building the highest number of fighter aircraft during the World War.
Tupolev Tu-144 was more suited to tougher operating conditions and had a different engine configuration. The pronounced differences were adumbrated by the only pilot who flew Concorde as well as its Soviet Counterpart: “A Concorde was like a Kentucky thoroughbred – a delicate horse but very speedy. And the Tu-144 is like a Clydesdale, a massive horse with unbelievable power but not nearly as efficient.”
But nowhere would we be calling Clydesdale a Scottish Kentuckian thoroughbred, or vice-versa. Calling the Tu-144 a Communist Concorde or Concordski means that the aircraft already has two sneering monikers to it (albeit that two of them could be, for obvious reasons, lumped under the same bracket). T.S. Elliot said that a cat needed three names: one that the family uses daily (such as Peter or John), the second would be fancier ones (such as Plato or Electra) for making them sound sweeter, and a final one that’s more “particular, peculiar, and more dignified”. To be called NASA’s “supersonic flying laboratory” might just have restored a bit of dignity into this aircraft that was designed not by the famed aeronautical engineer Andrei Tupolev but by his son.
The Tu-144 was haunted by a few problems
There were a few competitive advantages that the Tu-144 had (over the Concorde). One of them was the fact that for the Concorde to get supersonic, it had to be over water. This would typically be when the aircraft was somewhere between the South Wales coast and the northern coastlines of Devon and Cornwall.
This is because supersonic aircraft are often associated with sonic boom, which was capable of rattling windows of houses, teacups, and animals too. In short, SSTs like Concorde, as was later discovered, was not as amicable with the environment. But this concern of an SST like the Tu-144 affecting people over the ground wasn’t as big a problem in the Soviet Union, as most of the routes between the east and west of this nation would fly over sparsely inhabited areas.
Unbearable Noise
Despite the comparative advantage mentioned above, people onboard the Tu-144 had to communicate in a written form rather than verbally. This is because the aircraft’s noise would deaden whatever a passenger would wish to convey to a fellow passenger. Like most military aircraft of its time, the Concorde could only sustain supersonic speeds using afterburners.
Other Shortcomings
The Tu-144 turned out to be a rather cramped aircraft. It was five abreast (compared to Concorde’s four). It also suffered hundreds of failures, many of them in-flight. These included:
- Depressurization
- Engine failure
- Alarms that couldn’t be switched off.
The Tu-144 was around 20 tonnes heavier than its rival. Its additional wheels (twelve underneath the wings and two at the front) also added to its lugubriousness.
Flying only on a single route
December 26, 1975 marked the first service using Tu-144, as it was initially deployed to carry mail between Moscow and Almaty. These flights would serve as stepping stones for passenger operations on the same route that first took place on November 1, 1977. The aircraft had received its certification from the USSR Gosavia register only a few days prior to the first passenger flight i.e., on October 29, 1977.
Note that the first passenger flight using the Tu-144 had a fare of $110, which, according to the New York Times, included a 21-ruble surcharge over the normal fare.
The Tu-144’s short commercial career was plagued by reliability problems, with records indicating more than 220 equipment failures across 102 flights. One particularly troubling episode occurred in January 1978, when a flight carrying senior officials and journalists continued despite multiple instrument failures and concerns that the landing gear might not deploy properly.
The incident highlighted just how serious the aircraft’s technical shortcomings had become. Such concerns were reportedly reflected in the extraordinary precautions taken before some departures, with chief designer Alexei Tupolev and senior aviation officials personally inspecting the aircraft before it was cleared to fly.
The New York Times also claimed that there were plans to deploy the Tu-144 on other routes, such as to Tashkent, and across the breadth of the country to Khabarovsk. However, these never materialized.
Economic problems beckoned
Concorde was enormously expensive as it cost $46 million apiece. The Tu-144 cost $23 million (including spare parts). Maybe the allure of a supersonic travel would have led to other carriers operating the Tu-144 (and the Concorde) but the OPEC oil embargo meant that airlines were looking for aircraft that would be able to avoid gas-guzzlers like the Tu-144. It was this embargo that helped bring new wing technologies such as winglets and sharklets into the aviation community.
Tu-144’s biggest nightmare: The Paris Air Show of 1973
The Paris Air Show of 1973 was supposed to be seminal for the Tu-144. After all, the Russians had a chance to demonstrate the aircraft was not rip-off of Concorde. The initial brio of Soviet can be captured in Test Pilot Mikhail Koslov’s words “Just wait until you see us fly..Then you’ll see something.” Koslov had taken his supersonic aircraft after French Pilot Jean Franchi had showcased Concorde’s abilities. Koslov’s maneuvres had even prompted U.S. Test Pilot Bob Hoover to say”“My God….I don’t see how he can do it!”
However, as Kozlov attempted to flatten out the Tu-144’s climb, he struggled to regain control of the aircraft. At an altitude of around 2,000 feet, the immense forces acting on the airframe caused the left wing to tear away, according to Time Magazine.
The wing separated first, followed by the tail and right wing, causing the aircraft to break apart in midair. All six crew members were killed, along with seven residents of Goussainville, while debris destroyed 20 homes in the village. The precise cause of the crash remained uncertain, although investigators and aviation experts largely attributed it to Kozlov’s attempt to perform maneuvers more appropriate for a fighter aircraft than a commercial airliner.
Tu-144 mishaps that followed and the abandonment
There is a story collection by the name of “A Tupolev Too Far” which describes the journey of a person who hops on to a Tupolev aircraft operated by the state carrier of Russia. After getting onboard on the aircraft run by the Tsar’s of the nation, the protagonist is transported into Breznev’s Russia. After the Tupolev aircraft is hit by an electric storm, the narrow’s friend is transported into a variant subjective realities. Tu-144 was not amenable to such mishaps, though.
On the realistic side of the spectrum, On May 23, 1978, a Tu-144 undergoing a test flight (before delivery to the state carrier Aeroflot) caught met a fatal accident that led to the death of two flight engineers. Aviation Safety Network (ASN) reported that when the aircraft was at an altitude of 3000 m, a fire started at the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU), located in the right delta-shaped wing.
The aircraft had to make an emergency landing during which two flight engineers were killed. Over the next few years, without much fanfare, the plane was quietly retired and production of new aircraft was stopped. Six minutes after the fire, the crew was able to belly land the aircraft.
In 1984, the Tu-144 program was mothballed, after Aeroflot decided to ground the aircraft. The main factor behind this was the blatant inefficiency of the aircraft. A commentator even said that “the TU-144 may well rank as the biggest single failure in the whole history of aviation”.
Data from ATDB.aero reveals that seven Tu-144s have been preserved in the following places:
- One at the Museum of Civil Aviation at Ulyanovsk, Southwest Russia
- One each at the Aviation School in Kazan-North, Research Institute in Samara, and the Air Force Museum in Moscow.
- One at the Auto und Technik Museum at Sinsheim, Germany
- Two at Zhukovsky (registered as CCCP‑77114 and CCCP-77115)
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